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Treat Your Content like A Product For Better Search Rankings

The recent years’ update to Google’s search engine algorithm has taught us all one lesson about SEO: It will always change. And in truth, that can be very frustrating. Especially when the result is that a lot of your website content and structure has to be overhauled due to the new regime. Plus, the fact is that whatever changes you make today to your online platforms with regards to SEO, there is no guarantee that it will stand once the new set of updates to the algorithm arrives.

However, no matter how many changes have occurred regarding SEO, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the attention to the content. For, whether now or before, the one thing that remains common is the content used online. The only difference now is that the content needs to be of good quality rather than simply conforming to a bunch of SEO tricks.

The relevance to “quality” content, however, is what we’re focusing on today. For one, what usually comes to mind when we talk about “quality”? There’s “quality” services and “quality” products – terms we’re quite familiar with in our consumer lifestyles. So likewise, that’s what you should now compare “content” to as well: a product or a service.

“Content” can mean anything here – from an eBook to the content on a web page to an infographic to a video, and so on: So basically, content refers to any possible kind of content that you can present online. And, just like a product you would physically sell or try to get customers interested in, this content has to cater to a particular need, be well-crafted, made of good quality, and fits in with what the customer wants. In fact, treating your content like a product would also explain why the old (mostly Black Hat) SEO shortcuts don’t work anymore: Poor quality products will always have a short selling-life.

How To Improve Local SEO Via Online Reviews

If you run a local business, one of the best returns you can get from your customers is good reviews. Now, of course, for a good review, you must have good products and services. But once you’ve mastered that bit, and you know your customers are happy, the best way to take advantage of your customers’ satisfaction is to nudge them into giving reviews about your business.

Now, these reviews can be Google+ reviews, Facebook reviews, or even twitter reviews: It doesn’t matter where these reviews are posted; all that matters is that these good reviews are posted online in a public forum in connection with your business. And, don’t fall into the pit of thinking that the higher number of reviews you get, the better your local search rankings will be. Sure, your rankings will improve, especially if your competitors don’t have the local SEO advantage of online reviews. But more than the number of reviews you have in relation to your site, it’s the higher rated reviews that will do the trick. There’s no need to fret about it though; the main aim is to get as many good reviews as possible, no matter the number of them you receive.

Of course, the tricky part is actually getting reviews. But contrary to what you might think, customers are usually happy to give reviews as long as they’re reminded and/or nudged into doing so immediately after they use your product or service; that is when their experience and opinion is most fresh in their minds.

In case you find getting reviews from your customers tricky without an incentive, you can easily give them a nudge by offering coupons, an extra service, or a discount for the next time they visit in return for a review. In fact, give your reviewers a simple mention of thanks on your local business’s Facebook page and you’ll often have loyal customers for life.

Maintaining Accurate & Consistent NAP For Local SEO

Local SEO, despite its more limited reach, has a ton of advantages that local businesses can easily milk for all its worth. However, the sad truth is that most businesses don’t rake in the full benefits of local SEO. In fact, most businesses actually damage their online rankings by not paying enough attention to local SEO. And one of the most crucial elements of local SEO is the NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) of the local business. Local SEO has the enticing ability to flourish without the local business or entity in question needing an exclusive website; social media accounts dedicated to the local entity with all the relevant details provided there is more than enough. However, considering the boom of entrepreneurship and the umpteen number of businesses out there, accuracy becomes extremely important.

For instance, if your business is named “CakeWalk”, you cannot display it as “Cakewalk”, “cake walk” “Cake Walk”, or in any other possible variation; your business’s name has to be “CakeWalk” across all your social media accounts and every online profile you register it on. Because, the fact is, any of those variations could easily refer to another local business, thereby leaving your own business high and dry. The same applies to your local entity’s phone number and address as well. Every detail should be exactly the same in every single social media platform you have registered your business information at. Also, don’t add or deduct information across various sites. If you’re registering one branch address, or two phone numbers in one site, then that should be the same thing you register in every other platform.

Another thing to keep track of regarding the NAP of your business is to keep track of it any time you change any of your business’s details (like if you change your location, phone number, etc.). For a change of these details on any one online platform should be copied onto every other online platform your local business exists in.

How To Optimize Your Website URL?

One would think that, with the URL(s) of a website being its web address, that people would pay more attention to it. However, statistics and a variety of examples on the World Wide Web show that this is often the most overlooked aspect about a website when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And this oversight remains even if you have been careful in deciding your website’s master URL.

Let’s take a common example to explain why optimizing your website’s URL for search engines is important: You blog. Now here, not only does your blog have a common URL address, but each and every post and link in your blog has a URL address of its own. So it’s prudent to ensure that all these URLs are optimized for searches. And the easiest way to do that is to keep two main points in mind:

1) Don’t Use Special Characters in the URL

Don’t use the “&” symbol or any other special characters as part of any URL address on your website if you can help it. Use letters, numbers, and hyphens instead; those are fine. However, including any other special character in the URL will only make it less likely to list on search result pages, as it is harder and trickier for search engines to crawl through those URL addresses effectively. (In simpler terms, search engines work better at crawling through and matching words, numbers, and hyphens to the appropriate keywords in web searches. Special characters, on the other hand, throw them off.)

2) Avoid Conjunctions in the URL

Most of the time, URL’s are formed based on our headings (in the case of blog posts, for example). Which is fine. But the URL would be better optimized if you avoided conjunctions and prepositions like “but”, “and”, “on”, “to”, etc. – unless they are very pertinently necessary as a keyword or searchable term.

LSI: The Perfect Alternative To Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Since 2013, Google’s search algorithm updates have turned old SEO techniques on its head and have had a lot of websites scrambling to fix the trouble they gained in the aftermath. To be perfectly fair though, a lot of those old SEO techniques were unfair on the users. And although many websites followed such SEO techniques mainly because their competition was following the same as well, many sites twisted the old SEO techniques to practice Black Hat SEO. And it is precisely to overcome such websites and to improve their users’ search experience that Google keeps changing and developing its algorithm to fish out the better web content from the poor quality ones. And one of the surest ways that Google’s changed its search settings is by ranking pages with stuffed keywords lower than it used to.

However, if keyword stuffing is your only folly regarding your website content and your content is still valid, then you have a pretty easy way to correct it without needing to overhaul your entire content. And that “way” is by implementing LSI in your content.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing)

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. And it is Google’s updated indexing technique to identify patterns in the text. In simpler terms, it means that Google has now developed its search engine algorithm to find related words, phrases, and synonyms that relate to the keywords in a search. So, to fix the many, many keywords in your content, all you have to do is retain the minimum amount of keywords, and then rephrase the other keywords into phrases and terms that simply mean the same as your original keyword. In fact, even if you have less than the minimum requirement of particular keywords in your content, if you still have enough terms related to those keywords in your content, your content can still be pulled up as a relevant result to that particular keyword-search.

Advantages

And the even better part is, LSI automatically increases the quality and readability of your content by its very purpose and definition.

How & Why Infographic Can Raise Your Web Traffic?

“A picture is worth a thousand words” goes the old saying. And that holds true even today, it seems. For recent statistics have shown that using infographics on a website can as much as double the website’s traffic!

Now of course, the key term here is “infographic”. So it doesn’t mean that any old photograph or image can cause the same rise in web traffic: The image has to specifically and clearly impart some kind of information to the viewer. Plus, it also means that you shouldn’t fall into the old trap of concentrating more on the graphics than the actual information you’re trying to convey. (The “info” does come before the “graphics” in the term as well, you know. So keep that in mind if you need help to be clear on your priorities while creating infographics.)

The How:

“The how” is in the way infographics appear on search engines: Google automatically ranks graphics higher as they’ve already learned their users prefer them. However, do note that your infographic will have the best impact only if you accompany it with relevant, explanatory text. Because, when Google finds your image, even the textual portion of the image will just be registered as an “image”. So it’s the accompanying text from which Google will pull relevant content and keywords.

The Why:

“The why” is a little more obvious; as in, “why do infographics help improve web traffic”: The plain fact is that humans, generally, process visual information much faster than audial or textual information. So people are more inclined to look at infographics than plain text. And if you do the smart thing and accompany your infographics with relevant content that explains the infographic even further and in detail, you’ll get happier, more satisfied users and, consequently, much better web traffic.

Google has been making steady updates to it’s search algorithm recently. Panda Updates that make it harder than ever for websites and blogs to rank in Google’s search results with the aid of a few quick (and old) SEO tricks. Now, before we come to why Google is doing this, here’s what you must first understand: Google caters to the users, not to you and other website owners. So Google’s first and foremost priority is to ensure that when their users search for something online, they get the closest and best possible answers available for their searches.Read more →

How to Make Google’s New Search Algorithm Changes Work for You?

Google’s recent (and, rumored to be still ongoing) Panda & Penguin updates in its algorithm have certainly sent the SEO world into a tizzy. All the old SEO tricks are slowly being hacked away to pieces. And SEO “tricks” in general seem to be on it’s way to extinction. And just to be clear, we’re talking about the old tricks where content was saturated with keywords, websites and blogs generously guest posted on other websites and blogs and vice versa, and sites had plenty of inbound links interacting with their own content on different web pages on their site.

Well, as hard as this may sound, Google’s search algorithm changes can actually be used to your advantage. The only difference is that, more than SEO “tricks”, you’ll be concentrating on optimizing your actual content. And here’s how:Read more →

3 SEO Tips To Boost YouTube Ranking

It’s not just content and images that can benefit from SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but also videos. And, considering how visually-oriented today’s audiences are, optimizing your YouTube videos for search engines is more important now than it ever was before. Now, considering the YouTube is the big Kahuna of all things video-related on the Internet, it makes sense that what you should be concentrating on is boosting your video(s)’ ranking on YouTube. So, now that we’ve established why boosting your YouTube rankings is important, let’s check out the ways in which to do so:

1) Use Keywords in the Video Tags

Use video keywords in your video tags. These will help Google find them and list them on their search engine. Be extensive, and choose keywords that suit your video; don’t just write whatever is popular at the moment. This will help your video rank in both Google and YouTube listings.

2) Use Long Video Descriptions

Writing online might follow the principle of being concise. But it’s better if you forego that rule when it comes to video descriptions. Your description does not have to go on for pages. But make it descriptive and long enough to fit in as much information about the video as you can. Try to work pertinent keywords into your video description as well. This will help YouTube rank and pull your video for those related searches faster and better.

3) Cross-Post Your Video(s) on Social Media and on Your Website

Don’t just upload your videos on YouTube and think your done with it. You’ll need to share those videos on your social media accounts (such as Google+, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) as well as on your website. The more possible places it’s posted, the better the chances are that it will be watched, and, consequently, the better it will be ranked.

Follow these tips, and your YouTube videos will have much better visibility.